1. Assess the value a marketing automation system would offer your company:
Identify the current pain points and see how many can be addressed by MA.
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25 Steps to Implementing a Successful Marketing Automation Program
1. Assess the value a marketing automation system would offer your company: Identify the current pain points and see how many can be addressed by MA. This is where you begin to get buy in from the key stakeholders.
a. Read blogs, whitepapers, case studies… there’s a wealth of information out there!
b. Attend demonstrations, webinars, and virtual events.
c. Consider an outside resource if you are limited in staffing and existing expertise.
Goldstein Group Communications 30500 Solon Industrial Parkway Solon, Ohio 44139 440-914-4700 www.ggcomm.com
2. Evaluate Marketing Automation tools/provider services: Be sure you understand what you’re getting for the price of admission.
a. How much hands-on consultation is included with startup?
b. What do additional hours of consultation cost?
c. How robust is the support network?
d. Discuss the MA tools with existing users. Are they happy or not? Why?
3. Evaluate internal resources that would spend time on implementing MA: Examine the skill sets of internal resources. Map out personnel and MA functions.
a. Can the available team support and sustain the program to assure success?
b. Who will handle creation of landing pages, emails, etc.? Do they know HTML?
c. Who will handle email distribution? Do they understand how to segment lists?
4. Think about MA with or without a CRM. a. Are your goals strictly marketing related or are they tied to a corporate initiative to better forecast? b. How are your corporate financial reporting functions related between marketing and sales?
c. Do systems talk to one another easily and comprehensively?
d. What data can’t be obtained or is a struggle to get?
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5. Obtain costs figures to build into future budgets, not just hard costs — include internal costs of time and personnel to implement MA.
6. Sketch out and think through a reasonable timeline to implement and get up to speed. Ensure that proper resources are allocated so that timetables are achievable, or you will end up not meeting the deliverables and under deliver on expectations.
7. Draft your plan from a 30,000 ft. perspective, revisit your plan often and revise as necessary. There will be bumps along the way. The better you plan, the fewer the bumps!
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Communicate frequently with key stakeholders to build consensus upfront that MA will be an improvement to processes and help the bottom line. Keep them involved and invested in the success of the program. Make sure each of the following under stand ‘what’s in it for me’:
a. Marketing executive team
b. Sales management
c. Sales personnel (inside sales and field reps)
d. IT / technical resources
9. Choose an MA partner and fine tune your plan. Get their input. Make sure the plan is specific to your new partnership and is designed to take full advantages of the new tools that will be at your fingertips.
10. Sign a contract.
11. Start thinking about your content plans. It is important to turn your organization into a ‘content monster’ if you’re going to succeed. This is something that can’t be over looked in the early stages. You don’t want to get to the end of the implementation plan and then start creating your content. You will be wasting time and resources. The two initiatives must work on parallel tracks.
12. Train (and cross train) appropriate personnel. Without proper staffing and training, you run the risk of not achieving key deliverables and meeting objectives and deadlines.
13. Collect prospect records to import into your MA software. Take time upfront to clean data so that you are importing scrubbed records with minimal duplication. You should be able to handle this part of your implementation plan on your own, unless there is something unique to your data and systems. Know going into it if you’re facing something unusual and plan for the unexpected.
Goldstein Group Communications 30500 Solon Industrial Parkway Solon, Ohio 44139 440-914-4700 www.ggcomm.com
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14. If you are going to have CRM and MA, connect the two programs. This can be simple or complicated depending on your CRM system. Thinking through the data in your CRM system is critical because when the MA program talks to the CRM program, the output of data you can obtain can be overwhelming. Connect the two programs so you can measure what matters! Don’t overthink it, but do spend time upfront to understand what data you want to easily obtain at the drop of a hat, and plan for that. Down the road, you can add more dashboards etc. but at the onset, make sure you can measure important outcomes to demonstrate your successes.
15. Decide who will have what rights, such as “Administrator or User.” Define territories etc., set up automation rules, which users can access blogging features, who receives email alerts, etc.
16. Upload new content, such as white papers, into the MA system. Create redirected URLs to existing content.
17. Create your landing pages with careful consideration of your offers. a. Follow best practices for your calls to action (CTAs) that encourage visitors to take advantage of your offers. b. Remember: You’ll need to nurture prospects from the top of the funnel to the bottom. Your offers should reflect where they are in the funnel to help qualify them in your lead scoring/grading. c. For lead scoring/grading, what sort of information will your landing page forms need to collect? d. A/B test shorter and longer forms to see how they influence conversions and lead quality. e. Do you want a lot of unqualified leads to nurture? Or is your preference to have fewer, but more qualified leads?
18. Set up your marketing campaigns and define your lead sources. Design and think through appropriate naming conventions for multiple users that will be intuitive and suitable for the long term.
19. Design your lead nurturing campaigns and scoring and grading weights for prospects. Revisit this often to make sure you have it nailed. Chances are you will need to tweak it.
20. Enable third party connectors to Google etc. for SEO.
Goldstein Group Communications 30500 Solon Industrial Parkway Solon, Ohio 44139 440-914-4700 www.ggcomm.com
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21. Plan your social media initiatives. What channels will you use? Facebook? LinkedIn? Twitter? Pintrest? Google+? Blogging? Will your blog be available via email subscription and RSS? Based on the MA you choose, a number of these things can be automated. For example, when you post a blog, a tweet will go out on Twitter and an update posted on Facebook.
22. Encourage your user community (from marketing through sales) to install any desktop and/or smart phone applications that will enable them to immediately utilize data from your MA efforts.
23. Kickoff with a small “project.” Select a short-term project (if possible), one that is designed to turnaround faster than your company’s normal sales cycle. This will provide a faster view of how thing are working (or not working).
24. As the project goes ‘live’ watch the results closely. Your new MA program will give you a lot of great data to review. Become familiar with where the data can be found easily and where you may need to export data for a more detailed review. Study reports. Analyze results. Tweak to make improvements. And ‘Always Be Testing’ (ABT).
25. Roll out full marketing initiatives. Be sure to adjust these initiatives based on what was learned with the small project. With proper planning, some of your most valuable marketing activities will occur at a time that will allow your new MA program to give them a serious boost!
Goldstein Group Communications, a technology b-to-b agency, brings an unusual combination of corporate communications management and engineer-level writing capability to its national client roster. With deep experience in electronics and industrial markets, the agency is able to draw on its skills to articulate with impact and clarity the technical advantages its clients bring to their customers. Unlike other agencies, staff members for the most part have built their careers on the corporate side of the desk, rather than as agency executives, a perspective that results in a higher level of accountability and measurability in the agency’s programs.
Goldstein Group Communications 30500 Solon Industrial Parkway Solon, Ohio 44139 440-914-4700 www.ggcomm.com
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